During the operation of complex equipment used to treat a patient; for example, in a delicate surgical procedure such as ophthalmic surgery, a surgeon, physician, dentist, or veterinarian may use a variety of pneumatic and electronically driven handpieces. The handpieces are operated by a variety of control systems. The control systems, in turn, receive inputs from a variety of different peripheral devices configured to receive manual control inputs.
One of the most important manually controlled peripheral devices is a footswitch. Exemplary footswitches are disclosed in a variety of U.S. patents, including U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,857 (Scheller, et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,965,417 (Massie), U.S. Pat. No. 4,983,901 (Lehmer), U.S. Pat. No. 5,091,656 (Gahn), U.S. Pat. No. 5,268,624 (Zanger), U.S. Pat. No. 5,554,894 (Sepielli), U.S. Pat. No. 5,580,347 (Reimels), U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,777 (Telymonde, et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,760 (Thorlakson), U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,749 (Holtorf), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,179,829 B1 (Bisch, et al.), and in International Patent Application Publications Nos. WO 98/08442 (Bisch, et al.), WO 00/12037 (Chen), and WO 02/01310 (Chen).
The aforementioned exemplary patents and patent applications focus primarily on the operability or functional attributes of footswitches—not on the ergonomic usability of a footswitch. Accordingly, it is not unusual for an operator of a prior art footswitch to experience foot and/or leg fatigue, particularly when performing repetitive motions over a long period of time. This foot and leg fatigue affects the ability of a physician, surgeon, dentist, or veterinarian to properly control motion inputs to the footswitch. In extreme circumstances, the result of operator fatigue may be inadvertent improper operation of a handpiece. Such improper operation could be injurious to the patient.
Therefore, a need remains in the art to provide a footswitch for use by a physician, surgeon, dentist, or veterinarian whose operation is ergonomically designed. Such ergonomic design will reduce foot and leg fatigue and thereby reduce the risk of inadvertent patient injury.